Eloping
by R Amythest
Summary: Elena and Gawain, proud fugitives.


She had seen him many times before, in portraits, at ceremonies, once when he ordered the patrol to cease their attack upon the doors of the temple. From behind a dusty window, she watched him end all violence with a commanding bark, then beseech the Father to let him have a word. She was fifteen and he was a handsome general. For a short time she was smitten, draping herself upon the pews and imagining that he would ride back to her to sweep her off to Nevassa, his large hands about hers as they ballroom danced. He would whisper in her ear as they stargazed that she should elope with him to Serenes, and she would, marrying him upon their sacred altar to the tune of sweet galdrar. In the years to come she would bear his children, four of them, sandy-haired and quiet and perfect.

General Gawain did not return to Palmeni Temple for a year and a half. By the time he came to pray weekly, she had only stray amusement at her youth as she met him proper. She approached him where he knelt, a rag in her hand for she meant to polish the candle-holders. They exchanged titles. _General. Sister. Do you require our aid? No, not for myself._

_Not for myself._

Elena holds on a little tighter around his waist as their tired horse stumbles in the dusk. Against her nose, his cape holds the scent of manure, a week's soured sweat, steel and urine. Her legs and arms ache from riding and she hasn't slept since early last morning, when the wings of dracoknights flashed shadow upon them above the forest where they rested. Danger hasn't left them and they still ride for their lives, but for the moment her adrenaline and kindness are exhausted.

When the horse finally limps to a stop in refusal and Gawain mutters to her that they'll have to walk, she lets herself complain a little. "This has been awful." She feels worse about it when she does, clutching at the heavy bronze medallion in her satchel. He doesn't reply and leads the horse along as he limps in silent reminder of an arrow from their pursuers three days before. There isn't a thing he's running from. Not for himself.

She weaves her hand about his, and with tired love tries to change what she said. "Eloping isn't much fun." He gives an amused snort and clasps her slender hand; they smile grimly, lean toward each other. Elena wishes that, even with her staff shattered, she could ease some pain from his leg, but he refuses to lean upon her as she did upon him.

"No. I'm sorry I broke your mother's good plates," he says.

She laughs despite herself and pats his arm. "She never forgot." Elena doesn't mention that her words were, _He could have waited until they were his to break. _With a pang of regret – Do they know who her mother is, where she lives? Have they brought her to the palace to wring whatever they can from her? – Elena leans to brush his cheek with her matted blue hair. Gawain lays a brief peck on her forehead, lips rough and strangely heatless. She wonders if he worries for his old father, even now a loyal knight.

She doesn't remind him by asking.

They risk resting for an hour in the open. She sits down at the base of an isolated tree, curling her stiff and aching toes within her boots. He rummages through the packs strapped to the horse and breaks a piece of hardtack, handing her half and his canteen as he tries to flatten a stubbornly curled map.

Elena cracks off a chalky bite, chasing its tastelessness down into her stomach, where it doesn't help the light feeling within her. Reluctant to continue eating, she watches him muse and says, "Where are we now?"

"About halfway to Oribes Bridge," he says, chewing upon his own ration without hesitation. "We'll see if it's safe to cross."

And if it would be, then they would be in Crimea, and they could take a night to rest. They might find an inn in a backwards enough place that no one would recognize his face, and with the Crimean patrol between them and their pursuers, they could rest a fraction easier. But if not, then they would have no choice but to cross through Begnion. Passing through Crimea would be difficult, but the route through Begnion would be even harsher, the tallest mountains in the world guarding each border.

Either way, they would still have weeks on the road. After all, their destination is Gallia. No one from Daein would ever search there.

She hums the dying heron's song to herself to make sure she hasn't forgotten. Not for the first time, Elena wonders if she should be fleeing. She was convinced of it when she met Lillia's fading eyes, her emaciated fingers shockingly strong as she clasped Elena's hands around the medallion and insisted again in her incomprehensible but melodic voice, _Etihsahegin. Etihsahegin arak okok._ When Lillia began to sing her song again, Elena sang it with her in tandem, tears streaming down her face – not right then for the way her life would change irrevocably, but for they both knew that Lillia would soon die.

Now, nearing the edges of Daein, with each tired hour further from everything she knew except for one man, Elena wonders if she had imagined it all. Imagined that the heron wanted her to run with the song and the medallion. Imagined that it was a matter of grave consequence. After all, she hardly understood a word Lillia said. It was all instinct.

Elena closes her eyes and pretends she was wrong. She imagines visiting a town without fear and renting two horses from the stables, riding back to Nevassa side by side with her fiance in time for their planned wedding. If only that could be! The Daein army's dogged pursuit proved to them that she had been undoubtedly, terribly right.

"It was supposed to be tomorrow, wasn't it?" she says. Not looking up from his map, Gawain grunts in agreement.

"Had father's suit re-fitted for nothing," he grumbles. Elena imagines the ceremony room of Palmeni Temple cheerily decorated with wildflowers and colored ribbons, pews full of his wonderful family and hers, her mother who gave birth to her and the sisters and brothers she had gained. The Father was to preside, to beseech Ashera to smile upon their union, handing them the libation with one of her hairs and one of his that with hands joined they would pour before the altar. She imagines that tomorrow, their loved ones back home will gather as if nothing had happened, waiting until night for the bride and groom who would never come. That lively hall, waiting.

It is a better thought to her than the likelihood that, without General Gawain demanding their civility, the soldiers had burst into the temple and brought it into disarray in their search for the fugitives. Heartbreaking to imagine the candles on the floor, a dark room, the pews smashed, empty and lifeless. Heartbreaking, too, to imagine her own house pillaged, her mother's fine blue dress – an heirloom from at least three mothers before her – torn from its hanger and tattered on the floor, grime in footprint patterns stamped upon its careful embroidery. The house empty, hopefully. The people elsewhere. Safe.

"I wish I could taste the sweets," she says, trying to answer his call to remain in good spirits. "The baker had done such a marvelous job."

"Apple pastries, right?" He distracts himself from his map for a moment to smile at her. "More your taste than mine." She remembers how Gawain indulged her, hoisting her upon his shoulders so she could reach the branches of the trees and pick the apples herself. Like a child on the shoulders of her father – but he was not _that _much older than her – she laughed as she pushed leaves from her face. She admired the smooth colored skins of the ripe fruits in her fingers before plucking them one at a time with a quick snap of the stem between her fingers, as to not hurt the tree. _I'd like to go fruit picking in the south sometime. What's in the south? All sorts of delicate berries. The winters are too harsh here. Your love for fruits. If only you'd pine for chocolates like any other girl, I could give you what you wanted. Chocolates are all right. You might as well live with the herons. I'd love to go study with them sometime – Ashera willing. Study? Are you sure you won't be there to eat their forests bare?_

She knows now that she won't be studying with them. Ashera willed it not to be.

But she still can't understand why the Goddess let things happen as they did. She can hear the Father preaching, _Though __Her methods are a mystery to us, She sees that goodness prevails. _She kneads her fingers around her satchel, feeling the hard edges of the medallion within. In the silence that steals their conversation, she whispers, "Is this what You will of me, my Goddess?" Her voice is too soft to reach her own ears, but it is never too soft for Her. "If You so entrust me, I accept. I will bear Your earthly burdens and work Good as You design. Oh Ashera, let all be well." With a tip of her head, she sends the thought up to where She watches.

Across from her, in this barren dead early-spring plain, Gawain rolls the map and slips it back into its protective case, giving a grunt as he puts weight on his injured leg to stow it back upon the horse. "There should be a village nearby, west. It's worth seeing if they've set up soldiers yet, for the time we'd lose without a horse."

Elena murmurs her consent – not that refusing is an option – and rises, offering her arm again to her beloved to lean upon. Again, he wraps his arm around her as if she proposed an embrace, ignoring that she had even offered to support his weight. "Don't be foolhardy," she chastises.

"I should be able to carry my own weight," he says brusquely.

"Then, should I bear the medallion alone?" Before he can respond, she says, "You would flee our homeland in shame for me. To shelter and support me. Will you not let me return your love?" He clamps his mouth shut, lips pressed unhappily as he leans his weight upon her shoulders. They amble along the roadless plain, their horse the most reluctant to keep walking.

With the droning rhythm of their panting lulling her mind to wander, Elena wonders when – between all of his unremarkable temple visits – they had begun to see each other as something beyond a sister and a general. When did she begin to feel it not unthinkable but necessary for a man not yet her husband to lean across her shoulders, and walk with her in the dark? How did she come to feel that conviction that she could go to him, and he would understand her need to flee? And when did he grow so attached that he would leave everything behind for her?

Was it when she traveled to Nevassa with him to attend one of the king's balls with him? Not because she enjoyed the ball – even though she fancied herself a passable dancer – but because, after they both found noble company appalling, Gawain slipped away with her to the gardens and they passed the evening talking about their childhood pastimes. He had been a local champion at horseshoes. She had been a stargazer before they led her to the divine. _What do the stars say of the future tonight?_ For a few moments she studied the positions of the colored stars and tried to remember what it meant for the red star to be strong in the western skyline and the bright star to be absent before she resigned herself to forgetfulness and answered instead, _They say that the custard from the banquet shall trouble your stomach tonight. _Laughing together, he found her hand and they watched the light clouds drift over the moon. She had never felt so contented in another person's presence before.

"There's one thing you're wrong about," Gawain suddenly says, breaking the flow of her thoughts. She humors him with an _oh?_ "We're not leaving in shame."

Sneaking in the night in hopes of crossing the border, Elena ponders if she feels any of the shame implied in their guilty behavior. She remembers the general before the altar, to her alarm speaking the thoughts in her head. _Ashera help us for what we do to the laguz. General... please be careful. Not everyone in this temple feels the same. Then you do? _

Lillia in her prison. The way she gestured and pantomimed as she must have told stories about her impatient brother, her stiff-necked father, the way the forest came alive every morning at dawn. The way they laughed together over the antics of a foreign boy that Lillia had known and kissed as a young girl. Their laughter was the only thing that brought life to her blanched skin. She must have been so lively at home. She could never go home.

"You're right," Elena says. "Shame is theirs to bear."

Quietly, obligedly, they keep walking through the night. Although her legs tremble with their combined weight, weak from hunger and fatigue, Elena gently urges Gawain to keep their pace until morning. She hums a tune of waking that could be a lullaby to soothe their aching spirits. Glancing at the stars to keep their country behind them, she leads them onward.


End file.
